Everywhere in Johnson's letters and in the occasional anecdotes, we come
upon indications of a tenderness and untiring benevolence which would
make us forgive far worse faults than have ever been laid to his
charge. Nay, the very asperity of the man's outside becomes endeared to
us by the association. His irritability never vented itself against the
helpless, and his rough impatience of fanciful troubles implied no want
of sympathy for real sorrow. One of Mrs. Thrale's anecdotes is intended
to show Johnson's harshness:--"When I one day lamented the loss of a
first cousin killed in America, 'Pr'ythee, my dear,' said he, 'have done
with canting; how would the world be the worse for it, I may ask, if all
your relations were at once spitted like larks and roasted for Presto's
supper?' Presto was the dog that lay under the table while we talked."
The counter version, given by Boswell is, that Mrs. Thrale related her
cousin's death in the midst of a hearty supper, and that Johnson,
shocked at her want of feeling, said, "Madam, it would give _you_ very
little concern if all your relations were spitted like those larks, and
roasted for Presto's supper." Taking the most unfavourable version, we
may judge how much real indifference to human sorrow was implied by
seeing how Johnson was affected by a loss of one of his humblest
friends. It is but one case of many. In 1767, he took leave, as he notes
in his diary, of his "dear old friend, Catherine Chambers," who had been
for about forty-three years in the service of his family. "I desired all
to withdraw," he says, "then told her that we were to part for ever,
and, as Christians, we should part with prayer, and that I would, if she
was willing, say a short prayer beside her. She expressed great desire
to hear me, and held up her poor hands as she lay in bed, with great
fervour, while I prayed, kneeling by her, in nearly the following
words"--which shall not be repeated here--"I then kissed her," he adds.
"She told me that to part was the greatest pain that she had ever felt,